Widgets and an Expanded Plan of Habit Formation Towards Mastery

Habits are a pain, Mastery of a skill is even more of a pain. But doing this for several habits? That’s a war on multiple fronts.

I’ve had a year’s worth of habit formation under my belt - it’s not even a problem to form one anymore. When I think about pushing this project for the future, I think about a smooth graph of habits working in harmony with one another. What’s this look like?

Imagine an entire plan for a year comprised of superhabit formation, growth cycles smoothly kicking in, ratcheting up, switching of to other skills, a year that’s a symphony of perfectly progressed advancement in all skills. Harmony is achieved by pressing just enough, but not too much to interfere with the continual upkeep of other skills.

What I feel hasn’t been discussed are small protocols that kick in at those breaking points - I’ll call them WIDGETS for now, after the small third party programs on websites or computers that kick in when you need them.

And that’s exactly what I want them to do - a small kick when the system needs it that then go away once their mission is complete.

What are some examples?

-Timothy Ferriss’ DiSSS protocol to push skill mastery
-Protocols for absorption and flow states for progression
-Flow and ritual protocols for regimentation, specifically to avoid worrying and thus leaching willpower when I’m not working
-Having absorptive habits or hobbies to help in not obsessing about pushing skills when not working
-A litany of past successes in order to push past HABIT MANIA - the feeling of needing to do everything at once because everything needed to be in place yesterday
-Other protocols for specifically getting past the emotional aspects of breaking points - like Vipassana to push past depression or that drowning feeling
-Taking weekends off in order to preserve sanity

I think this might be different from a previous idea I had - nested habits . Nested habits are protocols within an already established habit, while widgets would be auxiliary protocols to make sure the whole program (across all habits) is moving as smoothly as possible. So that may or may not include skill mastery pushes.

Habit Exhaustion, Stalling, and Growth Cycles

My habits, from an automaticity SRHI standpoint, are AMAZING. 

But from a regimentation and mastery standpoint, they’re shaky.

I’m having more difficulties moving from quality practice from one task to the next during a day. The reason is emotional - I feel like I’m not progressing towards Mastery in any given habit. So despite the length of time and the strength of my habits, it’s not paying off enough for me.

The best example is eating - I initially got a great ROI - I lost weight, etc. Now, despite having it solid, I’m hovering around the same weight, while my buddy, who’s been counting calories, has lost tons of weight. I have to remind myself it’s not about the result, it’s about getting good at the process, yet it still bothers me.

Lydia suggests that I should pick one or two specific habits to enter a growth cycle - the problem is that I feel that ALL of them need to be grown - it’s similar to picking a new habit. I feel I need 20 of them. And I feel it’s important to define that emotional state because it’s the cause of a lot of failure - the need to do everything at once, preventing any improvement on anything despite tremendous energy expenditure (emotionally or work-wise). I’ve always referenced it as “life ADD” - but we’ll call it something else. A compulsive urge to multitask and overcommit. I wish I had a good term from engineering for this, because more and more I”m seeing this whole system in terms of locomotion - aeronautics or something, with thrust, drag, acceleration, etc.

And there’s a cloudiness involved with this. I can’t see past the urge to overcommit, but when talking about it I realized that a few things are ok. Eating is ok - I need to clean it up, but it won’t need much additional willpower. It just needs to redirected, as does my fixed meditation. The two things that might actually make the most changes are bodyweight exercises, because it tends to affect mood, and dynamic meditation, which also effects mood. That’s what Lydia says anyways.  I have to think about it more.